


Just Go On The Internet And Tell Lies

by ABCsoup



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Bad Decisions, Catfishing, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Erica has low self-esteem, Everyone Is Alive, Humor, M/M, Online Dating, Romantic Comedy, Socially Awkward Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4721765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABCsoup/pseuds/ABCsoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I catfished someone, Derek!” She admits. She stares at him for a while, waiting for him to react.<br/>“What the fuck does that even mean?” he finally asks, after he’s run through every context he can think of and still not finding one that makes sense. She rolls her eyes through her drying tears.</p><p>Erica catfishes Stiles. Derek must have been a mass murderer in a past life, because there’s no other explanation for why he’s the one that ends up having to clean up her mess and deal with some unintended consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Erica barges into his apartment at an ungodly hour of the morning, crying. She doesn’t even say anything to him. She slams the door and heads straight for the refrigerator and pours herself some of Derek’s orange juice.

If he were anyone else, he’d be upset, but Derek was always got up before the sunrise, anyway.

Isaac, his roommate, was less pleased with her intrusion. “Shut the hell up, Erica!” he yelled from his bedroom.

“I’m having a crisis!” she shrieked back, eyes wild that betrayed the fact she’d gotten no sleep the night before. “You shut the hell up!”

Derek gently leads Erica over to the couch, looking regretfully at the now-empty carton of orange juice she leaves on the counter.

Once her sobs have subsided, Derek gives her his questioning look.

“It’s the online dating site I joined,” she explained. Derek’s back straightens and he draws his eyebrows together in his best attempt at looking threatening.

“No, nobody did anything to me,” she reassures him, her voice cracking. He strokes her cheek in an attempt to comfort her. She looks at him weirdly, then pushes him away, rejecting his comfort. “I’m the bad guy here!”  Derek waits for an explanation silently.

“I catfished someone, Derek!” She admits. She stares at him for a while, waiting for him to react.

“What the fuck does that even mean?” he finally asks, after he’s run through every context he can think of and still not finding one that makes sense. She rolls her eyes through her drying tears.

“There’s this guy, right? I went to high school with him. He was nerdy, but adorable. And way out of my league,” she begins.

“No one’s out of your league, Erica,” Derek interrupts.

“Be quiet, I’m trying to tell a story, not fishing for compliments. Besides, I know what I am and what I’m not, and I’m not exactly supermodel material,” she says. He scowls in disagreement, but remains quiet. “Anyway, I found him online. And I just wanted to be his friend! So I made a profile that wasn’t exactly me. And it escalated! I did not mean for any of this to happen, honestly. I don’t know what to do, Derek.”

“Why not Laura?” he asks, because her best friend and his older sister seems far more capable of dealing with this tragic comedy of errors.

“Well... That’s kind of the thing,” she says hesitantly. “I used your pictures.”

Derek looks at her, dumbfounded. “What?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” she says.

“I don’t know,” he says. It’s kind of a non-sequitur, but he doesn’t know anything right now. How should he handle this? Should he be feeling angry? He doesn’t, surprisingly, but anger seems like the logical choice in this scenario.

He can’t be mad at Erica, though, because as much as he hates to admit it, she’s basically family, and she’s hurting right now. More than anything, he just wants to fix her hurt right now.

There is a long, uncomfortable silence before Erica breaks it. “I can’t,” she says. “I can’t do this, Derek. I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” he asks.

“I can’t keep doing this. I have to tell him. But I can’t tell him, either.”

“Don’t, then,” he says, in his kneejerk response to keeping Erica away from things that hurt her, even though in the back of his mind he acknowledges that she is definitely in the wrong and she needs to deal with it.

“I have a date with him,” she admits. “I fucking scheduled a date with him and it’s tonight and I don’t know what to do. I can’t go.”

With sickening dread, Derek realizes exactly why Erica has come crying to his doorstep. It is incredibly unfair to him, as well as to this guy, and Erica has no right to ask this of him. But she won’t. She’ll heavily nudge him in the direction, but she won’t outright ask him. He’ll suggest it first, because it’s the only solution that means Erica won’t have to get her hands dirty. Where Erica won’t have to deal with the consequences of her bad decisions. And he’ll do it because Erica is his friend and he doesn’t have many of those.

“I’ll go,” he says.

“What? Derek,” she says in a kind of feigned surprise.

“I’ll go on your date. And it won’t work out well but you can come pick me up and introduce yourself and you won’t have to hide behind me to talk to him anymore.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she says. Even though she kind of already was.

“It’s fine,” he said. It wasn’t really, but Erica looked so relieved he couldn’t be that upset. “It’s 5 in the morning, Erica. I know you’re not usually up. Go crash in my room. I’ll make breakfast.”

* * *

Four hours later and Isaac emerges from his room. Derek’s grateful for the distraction. He’s been watching infomercials since Erica went back to sleep, because there’s really nothing else to be doing on a Saturday morning when he has this new thing to worry about.

“Is Erica still here?” he asks.

“Yes,” Derek replies.

“What’s her problem?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Derek says. He’s not sure how to explain, and he’s not sure if Erica wants him telling everyone. Although, she had barged in practically screaming about it, so she probably doesn’t care if Isaac knows.

Isaac waits patiently, waiting for Derek to finish his mental calculations on what’s safe to disclose. Isaac’s known Derek forever, and if they’re not exactly friends, they at least understand each other profoundly, both on some other level no one else in their lives has ever really been able to reach.

“Some guy,” he finally says. “There’s a date tonight.” He doesn’t bother mentioning it’s going to be his date now. He’d rather have Erica explain it because he really doesn’t have answers to all the questions it would bring up. And, as if just waiting for her queue, Erica emerges from the short hallway into the kitchen.

Derek pours a bowl of Grape Nuts and slices an apple into fours, sliding both to her. She frowns but doesn’t complain. Isaac snorts his amusement at her distaste and passes her a package of his own Wildberry Poptarts.

“I catfished a guy with Derek’s pictures so he’s going on a date for me tonight,” she announces, before Isaac has a chance to ask anything.

Isaac blinked in surprise. “Oh. Sounds fun,” he says, looking at Derek. Derek shrugs. “I foresee absolutely no problems with this.”

Derek starts feeling sick again. He’s just had four hours to go over everything that could possibly go wrong.

“It’ll be fine,” Erica says, waving away Isaac’s concerns. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Derek’s not exactly sure what the worst that could happen is, but it’s probably a lot worse than Erica’s blase attitude would lead anyone to believe. A nervous spark kind of explodes on his inside.

“I don’t know him!” Derek panics. “What if he brings up something from one of your conversations?”

“Fake amnesia,” Isaac helpfully supplies. “And when all you eat is vegetables and he’s confused because I’m sure he’s had to read his fair share of Erica’s caps-locked rants on the evils of artichoke, because everyone has, you can just tell him you’ve turned over a new leaf and are a different person now. Because you are.” He laughs at his own joke.

“You’re right, this is never going to work,” Erica sighs, finally breaking. “You don’t have to go. I’ll just stand him up, I guess.”

Derek frowns. He remembers on Erica’s prom night when she got stood up by her date. She’d cried in her room the whole night. He’d wanted to pummel the boy, but Cora had talked him out of it, saying she’d “deal with it.”

Cora was good at dealing with things.

Not that Erica was being intentionally mean-spirited. But empathy wasn’t her strong point, and she probably didn’t relate her own experiences to this guy she called her friend.

“I said I’d do it,” Derek reminds her.

“I know, but this is insane and you know it. It’s never gonna work,” she repeats.

“It could,” he protests stubbornly, even though everything in him is screaming to take the out he's being given.

“Why don’t you just go,” Isaac begins, directing his question to Erica, “and he’ll be all like, ‘Woah, you’re not a six foot, dark-haired dude, you’re a short blonde girl,’ you’ll be all like, ‘Yeah, sorry I didn’t think this through enough and I apologize but I’m still super swell,’ and continue on from there?” he finished, ever the voice of reason.

“I’m only short compared to you,” Erica protested.

“What if he gets angry? It might not be safe,” Derek says. Isaac immediately gets serious.

“He’s not like that,” Erica immediately defends him.

“You don’t know that,” Isaac says.

“He’s not. He’s super sweet and I’m going to hurt him because I’m a terrible person” Erica moans, about to start tearing up again.

“Hey,” Derek chastises her.

 **  
** “You are a beautiful, fierce young woman who sometimes makes bad choices,” Isaac says. “Now let’s go marathon _La reina del sur_ and forget all your problems.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve never watched La reina del sur, but I felt like watching Mexican telenovelas just needed to be an activity the three of them participate in together. Boyd joins sometimes but his spanish is really bad so they always have to stop and explain things to him but he’s still usually confused anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-date angst and more!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to cover the pre-date and the actual date, but I felt like that was a good cut off point, so now it's kind of short and I apologize.

After eight solid hours of telenovelas, Erica’s phone buzzes. She glances at it with a frown, not even bothering to open the message.

“So the date’s in an hour,” she says. Everyone processes the information.

“Is that him?” Isaac asks. 

“Probably.”

“Tell him to pick me up here,” Derek says. He’s given this a lot of thought. “We’ll go to wherever it is you guys decided to go, it’ll go badly because I’m terrible on dates anyway, I’ll call you to pick me up at the end of the night, and you can introduce yourself to him. Apologize for me, whatever. You’ll give him my number, text him from my phone for a couple days, then make up some weird reason why we have to switch phone numbers. And then I never have to get involved again.” 

“Wow, you put a lot of thought into this,” Erica says, awed. He’s a little concerned that she _hadn’t_.

“This is such a bad idea,” Isaac says, reiterating. “Derek doesn’t even know his name.”

There’s a beat as they all process _that_.

“What is his name?” Isaac asks.

“Stiles,” Erica replies. “Stiles. He’s 20, a third year communications major, and he likes DC better than Marvel,” she says.

“That’s all you know?” Isaac asks dubiously, while Derek screws up his face in disgust.

“He’s very wrong,” Derek says.

“Of course not!” she answer Isaac emphatically. “He’s kind of amazing and I could talk about him for hours probably but I don’t want to overload you with information. Those are just the most important points.” She turns back to Derek. “Now please go put on some real clothes,” she requests, eyeing his sweatpants and tank with a sort of bitter hatred.

“I was going to go running,” he defends himself, reminding her that his day had only been ‘wasted’ because she had burst in in full crisis mode that morning and he didn’t normally dress like this. Isaac had never made it past boxers, himself.

“Whatever, just look semi-presentable please. I don’t want him running off before I even get a chance to meet him.”

He rolls his eyes but ultimately ends up pulling on some jeans and just throwing on his leather jacket rather than actually putting on a decent shirt. It was supposed to be a bad date, anyway. He hears the front door open and shut, signalling Erica’s exit. He debates how to style his hair before ultimately deciding not to do anything at all. He could do dates if this was all that was required of him. No posturing, just Derek being Derek.

Of course, that’s not how dates worked, he couldn’t just be Derek because the real Derek was not a prize, not someone that other people wanted to actually date. He was good for a quick hook up, maybe, but not to date. And he was fine with that, really. He’d learned to live with it.

He just didn’t date anymore. It was easier than going through all the energy of pretending when he knew he’d slip up and let the real Derek out eventually anyway.

There’s a knock at the door. Derek takes several deep breaths. He can handle this. He’s not a people person, but he doesn’t have to be a people person. He just has to spend an hour or two with this guy, he doesn’t even have to make it enjoyable, he’s got the easy job. Erica’s the one that has to charm him.

He answers the door. Isaac is trying to watch inconspicuously from the kitchen. Inconspicuous meaning he is currently holding a carton of skim milk and a carton of 2% up to his face and pretending to be intently comparing the labels while actually watching Derek through the gap in the cartons.

Derek doesn’t have a type anymore. He was brunettes until Paige. He was blondes until Kate. Now he’s whatever doesn’t make him ready to retch from bad memories. But the man standing at his doorway is all mole-spattered skin and whisky brown eyes and an easy smile. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little immediately smitten.

“Hi Eric!” Stiles greets him, grinning from ear to ear. Derek jerks his head up in a casual, “What’s up?” nod. His throat feels a little too dry to speak. He finds himself wishing he’d put a little more effort into getting ready. He finds himself regretting every event that lead him to this moment, from his birth onward.  
  
Stiles offers to drive to the restaurant, and he opens the passenger door for Derek _as if Derek didn’t have perfectly good working hands of his own_ and the worst part is Derek doesn’t even find it aggravating, it’s actually almost endearingly thoughtful.

Stiles doesn't stop talking the whole car ride over, Derek chiming in with the occasional murmur of agreement, but mostly just enraptured by the whirlwind of energy that is Stiles Stilinski. As a general rule, Derek hates people that can't shut up, but when they arrive at the restaurant and he sees a small fountain out in the front, he wants to stick his head in until he passes out for an entirely different reason than annoyance.


End file.
